


A Luthor's Mercy

by CSIGurlie07



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: BICORP - Freeform, Black Mercy, Family, Lena's "perfect fantasy", supercorp preship, supergirl reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-01-16 19:25:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12349125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CSIGurlie07/pseuds/CSIGurlie07
Summary: Following the Daxamite Invasion, Rhea leaves a Black Mercy at L-Corp for Lena to find. Kara is the only one who can help her friend survive it-- but must sacrifice her biggest secret to do so. Canon-compliant, until it isn't. (Supercorp pre-ship) / (Jack/Lena)





	1. Prologue

Lena bolted upright, heart thundering in her ears. The room was dark around her, its shape unfamiliar in the shadows of deep night. Desperately, she peered around the room, searching for anything recognizable, but came up empty. Where was she? Last she remembered, she’d been in her office… and it had been day.

It had been the day after the invasion, and--

A hand clamped onto her shoulder. She shrieked, managing to knock the hand away and clock her assailant square in the face. A grunt and a curse answered the blow, but she was free.

“Ow, shit… Lena! Lena, it’s okay--”

Lena scrambled for the edge of the bed, only for strong arms to catch her before she could fall backwards off the mattress. “Lena!”

Finally, she recognized the voice, and the dark figure holding her resolved into a familiar face. “J--Jack?”

“It’s me,” he promised. He shifted Lena safely back onto the bed, loosening his grip as she relaxed. “It’s okay, it was only a nightmare. You’re okay.”

“I--” Her throat caught. “I don’t unders-- You’re _dead…_ Jack, I--” Jack flipped on the bedside lamp. Lena squinted against the sudden light.

“If I’m dead someone must have forgotten to give me the memo.”

Lena coughed, an unexpected laugh of shock spilling from her. Jack grinned in return, hale and healthy in the dim light. His hands rubbed comfortingly along her arms, grounding her. The room around them looked no more familiar, but it _felt_ like it should be.

She shook her head. “What-- what about the invasion? The Daxamites, the ships-- _Rhea_ …”

“Just a nightmare.” Jack pressed a kiss to her cheek. “You’ve been having a lot of those lately. Maybe it’s time for a vacation, huh?”

It didn’t feel like a nightmare. But already the details were fading to vague glimmers of ideas, and the world around her grew sharper. She could smell the tang of Jack’s breath, and felt the press of his skin on hers, the sharp edge of the wedding ring around her finger. She felt tired too, exactly like she would if she’d woken up at an ungodly hour.

“Let’s go back to sleep,” Jack urged softly, “before…”

“ _Mama!_ ”

A sharp cry lanced across Lena’s senses. Jack huffed lightly, sitting up. Lena followed, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed as small footsteps scampered into the room. They coalesced into the shape of a little girl with tight coils of blonde hair climbing up onto the mattress.

“Mama!” The girl pitched herself into Lena’s arms with a wail. Her face pressed against Lena’s chest, hot tears dampening her pajama top. Lena’s arms curled instinctively around the child, even as she struggled to remember her name.

Jack offered Lena a wry smile, giving the girl-- _Bethany_ , whispered a voice at the back of her mind-- a soft rub on the back before he pulled away. “I’ll grab the blankets. The others won’t be far behind.”

_Others?_  But Jack has already headed for the closet, and the child sobbing against her chest quickly consumed all of her attention.

“Shhhh…” she whispered, echoing the words Jack had said to her just moments ago. “It’s okay. It was just a dream. You’re safe.”

When Jack returned, Bethany had calmed, but refused to relinquish her hold on Lena. Lena’s eyes started to slam, pulled towards sleep by Bethany’s warm weight against her and the child’s gentle, even breaths. Jack guided her to lay back on the mattress, and Lena didn’t resist, even though a fading thought in her mind protested again that something was wrong.

“I love you,” Jack murmured, his finger stroking a lock of her hair against the pillow. His eyes traveled from Lena to Bethany and back again, gaze soft and gentle. “I’m right here.”

Lena let her eyes slip shut, burying her nose into the nest of blonde curls tucked under her chin. One final thought flittered across her brain.

_How could it not be real, when it felt so right?_


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, Lena cracked one eye open and quickly realized that more bodies had joined them in the night. This time, however, her first instinct wasn’t fear. Light filled the room, spilling over her dressing gown lying across the foot of the bed and familiar photos hanging on the walls. The crowded confines of the bed left her boneless and completely at ease.

Bethany still lay sleeping in her arms. A larger body pressed up behind Lena brought a furrow to her brow, until she recognized the bony growth-spurt knees jabbing her spine as Deion. Curled between her knees and Jack's, Trevor had tucked himself under one of the blankets Jack had pulled out the night before. Biting back a grin, Lena gently moved Bethany’s foot from where it had come dangerously close to kicking him in the nose.

A silent tug on Lena’s hair pulled her gaze up to meet Jack’s sleepy gaze. “ _Good morning_ ,” he mouthed silently. Lena smiled, mouthing the words back at him. She reached out one finger-- all she dared move without waking Bethany-- and his pinky curled around it in wordless affirmation. Warmth flooded Lena, starting deep in her chest and rapidly spreading outwards. It was a long, strange moment before she realized it was pure, unadulterated _happiness_.

If her teenaged self had been told she would have _this_ \-- a warm bed filled with people who loved her, to spend lazy mornings with-- young Lena would have laughed in their face. To have a true family, to succeed where the Luthors had failed so spectacularly... it would have seemed too fanciful to consider. Little did she know she’d only have to wait until she could make one for herself.

Before long, the smell of bacon cooking roused the little ones.

“Oh, God bless R.J. and Frankie,” Jack murmured, naming the two teenagers who had spent the night in their own room as the rest slowly stirred to wakefulness. When Bethany cooed sleepily, rolling over to rub her eyes with a small fist, Lena pressed a kiss to the girl’s hair.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” she said softly. “Are you hungry?” She flashed a smile to Trevor, who sat up with spikes of mussed hair sticking in every direction. Deion shifted closer, wrapping an arm over her waist. “Morning, honey,” she said, reaching an arm back to awkwardly return the hug.

“I’m going to go set the table,” Deion murmured against her back. He rolled over, only barely managing to get his feet under him before hitting the floor.

“Thank you,” Lena returned. She stroked Bethany’s hair, slowly bringing her sleepy daughter to the land of the living. “You aren’t going to sleep through pancakes, are you?”

That got the girl’s attention. A grumpy hazel eye opened, quickly sharpening at the prospect of her favorite breakfast. “Blueberry?”

“You’ll have to ask R.J. and Frankie very nicely,” Lena told her, “and soon, before they finish cooking.”

In a blink, Bethany snapped to full alert and scrambled for the edge of the bed. She slid off and dashed for the kitchen, her brother’s name on her lips. “ _R.J.!_ Can we have blueberry?!”

Finally, Jack had room to roll towards her for his own morning kiss. “Hey there.”

Lena smiled, giggling when his beard tickled her lips. “Hey. Sleep okay?”

“Trevor nailed me in the shins a couple of times, but I’ll live.” Jack slipped one arm around Lena's waist, and curled the other around her shoulders, pulling her into a full body hug. Lena pressed her face against his neck, letting her hands fist into his shirt. For a brief moment, her eyes burned with tears-- she couldn't fathom why. Lena’s insides melted, just as they had since the day they met.

“You okay?” Jack asked, voice husky.

Lena nodded against him. She pulled away to gaze at him, smiling contentedly as proof. “I love waking up like this.”

“Me too,” Jack grinned. “We did pretty good, didn’t we?” The sound of bodies moving in the kitchen and voices lifting drew them out of their toasty cocoon. “We should get moving, before our blanket-hog children eat all the bacon. Again.”

Jack headed straight for the kitchen, while Lena detoured to the bathroom to freshen up. By the time she joined the others in the kitchen, the first batch of pancakes were being devoured by Bethany, Trevor and Deion.

“Smells good in here,” she complimented the two chefs still at work in their pajamas. R.J. smiled and paused long enough to give her a hug. As usual, Frankie didn't move in for a hug, but she did offer Lena a broad smile before focusing on the bacon sizzling in the pan. Despite having been with them five years already, Frankie didn't enjoy the kind of physical affection the rest of the kids did-- but that was okay. Lena settled for giving Frankie a short rub on the arm, which earned her another bright smile. 

“Did you sleep okay?” Lena asked her. Frankie nodded. “That's good. Thank you for cooking.”

With a last kiss to RJ, Lena peeled away to work her way around the table, giving kisses as she went. Bethany squawked when Lena nabbed a piece of bacon from her plate on her way past.

“ _Mama!_ ” came the plaintive whine, but it shifted into a giggle when Lena thanked her with a second kiss and a tickle against her ribs.

“Here you go, buttercup,” Jack jumped in, depositing two fresh pieces of bacon on her syrup-drenched plate.

“I want some!” Deion shouted, jumping up to snag a handful before darting back to his seat.

“Hey, how about some pancakes with that bacon?” Lena chided. The scold was undermined by her own smile.

“Pancakes are just dessert for breakfast,” RJ pointed out. “How is that healthier than bacon?”

“Hey, my point is balance, okay?” Lena countered. “And the pancakes have fruit, so…”

“There’s strawberries in the refrigerator,” Frankie informed them, gesturing vaguely with the spatula in her hand.

“Ooh!” Jack chirped. He abandoned his plate of bacon to the piranhas, all of whom lunged for the plate as soon as it left his hand. “I’m on it!”

He dipped into the fridge, pulling out the large container of strawberries waiting to be washed and cut. Deion and Trevor bickered over the syrup, and for a long moment, Lena simply stopped and listened, breathing in the comfort, and happiness, and _love_ that surrounded her.

This was all she’d ever wanted. The Luthor manor had never held this kind of life, even when Lionel was still alive, and before Lex went to prison. Lena could barely bring herself to blink-- she felt as though she stood on a precipice, and a single moment of inattentiveness would let it all evaporate into thin air. How had she come to deserve a life like this? It was too good to be true.

Jack caught her eye, popping a strawberry wedge into his mouth. “Everything okay?” he asked.

Lena smiled, and felt it stretch into the deepest reaches of her heart.

“Everything’s perfect.”


	3. Chapter 3

After breakfast, Lena sent the kids to get dressed while she and Jack cleared the table. Together, they washed and dried, shoulder to shoulder as the kids laughed and bickered through getting ready for the day. When she handed over the final pan, Jack accepted it with a kiss to her cheek.

“I’ll finish loading the dishwasher,” he said. Lena thanked him with a kiss of her own, lacing her fingers between his with a gentle squeeze before heading off to the bedroom. By the time she emerged with clean hair and a comfortable outfit of jeans and a loose blouse, R.J. had commandeered the kitchen table for his circuitry project, complete with soldering iron and magnifying lamp. Frankie and Trevor had taken up opposite ends of the couch, one with a book, the latter with a handheld video game.

Lena grabbed herself a fresh cup of coffee and settled with a newspaper next to Frankie. She didn’t expect the head that settled on her shoulder a moment later, but she gave the crown a kiss and let her cheek rest against Frankie’s soft hair. She savored the contact, but made no other mention of it as she started reading through the day’s headlines.

Their quiet was shattered a few minutes later by a knock at the front door. Lena’s head shot up, instantly on alert. R.J. and Trevor paused in their tasks, and Frankie reached for her hand. They weren’t expecting company, and the nature of her and Jack’s celebrity meant enough security that surprise intrusions were rarely innocent.

“Stay here,” she murmured, rising to her feet. All three of the kids obeyed, but watched her every move as she crossed to the door and cracked it open. Lena froze at the familiar face waiting on the other side of the door.

“Aunt Kara!” Trevor exclaimed with delight. He bounded off the couch and slipped past Lena to wrap his arms around the waist of a stunned Kara Danvers. Their eyes met, and an electric jolt shot through Lena.

Suddenly, the building shook, quaking violently. Lena braced herself, reaching for Trevor-- but he only bounced up and down, as though he hadn’t felt a thing. A quick glance to Frankie revealed a relieved smile and an eyeroll-- of course it was Kara. Who else would show up unannounced?

“Aunt Kara?!” Bethany squealed from her bedroom. “AUNT KARA!”

There was a thud-- a body jumping off the bed-- and a stampede of happy feet interrupted by a call from Jack. “Ah, ah, ah! What did we say about clothes, B?”

“That I have to be wearing them!” Bethany called back. “But it’s _Aunt Kara!_ ”

“You _especially_ need clothes to say hello to Aunt Kara!” Jack insisted, his voice growing louder as he trailed after Bethany. His grunt traveled down the hallway, evidence that he'd snatched Bethany up seconded by the happy squeal that followed. “Clothes first, _then_ hugs!”

Lena flushed, offering Kara a smile she hoped was warm. “Hey, Kara. Come on in.”

Kara waded in, Trevor still wrapped around her waist. She looked just as confused as Lena felt. She didn’t remember making plans. What could Kara be doing here? She lived and worked in National City, and Lena knew the trip to Metropolis was long, and expensive. Usually, she and the kids visited the west coast, not the other way around.

“Kara? Is everything okay?” Lena watched her friend carefully, noticing her discomfort. “Trevor, baby, give Aunt Kara a chance to breathe, huh?”

Trevor relinquished his hold. “Aunt Kara! I got a new game! Wanna see?”

“Um,” Kara stammered, uncharacteristically ill at ease. “Maybe later, Tre-- Trevor.”

Lena watched as Kara’s odd stare traveled the room, catching on the photos she’d seen a thousand times before. They covered the walls and the mantel over the hearth: pictures of the kids, of her and Jack, all of them together. All smiles, all happy.

Growing up, the Luthor manor had only held stiff painted portraits of her family. When Lex was arrested, Lena was left with nothing but her own faded memories of the before-time, when he’d been kind and full of smiles. Now, Lena wanted proof of her happiness, proof that she had made a new life for herself, and for her family.

Kara looked at them now like the sight of them physically pained her.

“You look tired,” Lena told her, bringing her friend’s almost vacant stare back to her. “Come on, I’ll get you a drink. Kara will come say hi in a second, okay, Trevor?”

“Okay.” Trevor trotted back to the couch with the imperturbability only a seven year old could muster. Within moments he was engrossed in his game once more.

On her way past the kitchen table, Lena paused to peer over R.J.’s shoulder. The pattern he was mapping out was unorthodox, but in moments Lena could see what he was trying to accomplish. And it would work.

She squeezed his shoulder. “Good call, buddy.” Then she glanced at Kara. “Is coffee okay? We have tea, juice...”

“I, uh--” Kara hesitated again, and was spared from answering when a bright call interrupted her.

“Aunt Kara!”

Jack entered with Bethany slung over one shoulder. Lena’s concern at Kara’s strange behavior momentarily evaporated as a laugh bubbled out of her. She met them halfway, and Jack readily bounced Bethany off his shoulder and into Lena’s arms.

“Mama!” Bethany giggled, kicking her feet and throwing her arms around Lena’s neck. Lena burrowed her nose against her daughter’s neck, pecking a quick kiss before blowing a loud raspberry under her ear. Bethany squealed, and clutched her tighter.

“Did you try to forget your clothes again?” Lena accused playfully. She kept one eye on Jack as he moved to greet Kara. Kara, suddenly rigid, stared at Jack as though he’d sprouted a second head.

“Hey there, Kara,” he said. Kara received his hug stiffly. “It’s good to see you. Are you staying the weekend?”

“Yes, yes!” Bethany answered for her. She tangled her fingers in Lena’s hair, tugging excitedly. “Mama, can she?”

“Ow, honey, don’t pull so hard.” Lena met Kara’s gaze, and knew she wasn’t here for a normal visit. Not this time. Kara’s eyes traveled between Lena and Bethany, then flickered towards Jack before sliding away again.  

“Can I, uh…” Kara cleared her throat, shifting uncomfortably. “Lena, can we talk for a second? Alone?”

Anxiety twisted Lena’s stomach into knots. She knew bad news when she saw it, thanks to a lifetime of being a Luthor. Lena set Bethany down with a nod. “Kids, can we have the room, please?”

Silence answered her. R.J. looked up from his project for the first time, blinking as though only now realizing Kara had arrived. Without a word, he snapped off his lamp and unplugged the iron.

“Thank you,” Lena said when he took Bethany’s hand and started leading her from the room. Jack gathered the others, and shepherded them back towards the bedrooms. Frankie lingered nervously, picking up on the same strange vibes Lena had. Lena gave her a smile and nod to reassure her, and in the end Frankie let Jack tug her down the hallway.

When they were finally alone, Kara and Lena stood silently in the kitchen, staring at each other.

“Kara?”

Lena searched her friend’s face, apprehension growing deeper in her stomach at the uncertainty she saw there. Kara hesitated, wrapping her arms around herself. Tears filled her eyes when she looked at the refrigerator, plastered with art and diagrams and report cards, and she cleared her throat several times as though preparing to speak, but never quite getting to it.

“Kara, you’re scaring me,” Lena said. “Did something happen with Alex?”

“No.” Kara shook her head, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “No, nothing like that.”

“Then what is it? Please, you know you can tell me anything…”

At that, Kara nodded half-heartedly. “This is going to sound crazy, and it might not make any sense, but I need you to trust me, and just listen, okay?”

Lena nodded. Kara took a deep breath.

“Last night I found you in your office, unconscious. You’d been attacked by a creature called the Black Mercy.”

Lena drew back, arms tightening across her chest. But she didn’t speak, and Kara pressed on.

“This, this thing… it feeds off the energy of its chosen host, and to do that it puts its victim in a, a sort of coma, while generating the perfect fantasy to keep them calm and happy. That’s what this… all of this, is.”

Kara gestured at the apartment around her, warm and simple and filled with evidence of a life well-lived. Lena blinked, then burst into sharp nervous laughter that bordered on maniacal.

“Kara, what are you talking about?!” she gasped. “I worked from _home_ yesterday. I’ve been preparing for the conference next weekend. I wasn’t at the office all day!”

Kara took in a deep breath. “That memory isn’t real, Lena.”

Lena turned away with a scoff of dismissal, dumping her now-cold coffee down the drain. The motion hid the tremble in her hands, and the sudden apprehension creeping over her.

“Lena, do-- do you remember how we met?”

Lena rolled her eyes, letting a stiff smile curl her lips. “Of course I do. You were assigned to cover the Biomax launch; you asked for more details than I gave during the press conference, and we connected. What is all this about?”

But Kara shook her head. “Your brother blew up the _Venture_ , hoping to kill you.”

Old, familiar hurt lanced through her. Her muscles stiffened, and the age old lump in her throat returned. She grabbed the sponge, and scrubbed her mug clean. “Why are you bringing him into this? My brother is dead and gone, and I have worked so hard to move on from his legacy. Not just with Biomax, but in my own life. His name has no place here. None.”

“You came to National City,” Kara insisted, coming to press against the counter at Lena’s shoulder. “You moved your family’s company across the country to start fresh, away from the sins of your family. I interviewed you about why you missed the _Venture_ launch, then your alien detection device. Do you remember?”

“Clearly, none of that happened,” Lena scoffed, turning the faucet off with a snap, “considering you’re standing in my condo in Metropolis.”

“None of this is real, Lena! This apartment, Jack, the kids… none of it!”

“ _That is enough!_ ”

Lena whirled to face her, anger turning every muscle to steel. Her jaw clenched painfully, and her fist tightened around the mug still dripping in her hand.

She’d worked so hard to make this family a home-- to give her children, _any_ child, a sense of permanency as soon as they walked in the door. To even insinuate that they didn’t belong here would undo years of emotional labor and Lena would _not_ let Kara tear them apart.

“If you say _anything_ like that around my children, you will no longer be welcome here.” She took a deep breath. “Whatever game, whatever joke you’re trying to pull, it ends right now. Do you understand me?”

Tears filled Kara’s eyes, which dropped away from the intensity of Lena’s glare. “It’s not a game, Lena, I swear.”

“Jesus, Kara… _”_

“When have I ever lied to you?”

Lene blinked, her heart tripping in her chest at the soft-spoken words. Kara gazed at her, lips twisting in anguish. _The last time Kara looked so mournful, she’d been in Lena’s office with flowers in hand, because--_

The building shook under their feet, stronger and more violent than before. Pictures dropped from the walls, their glass faces shattering against the floor. From the bedrooms, Lena heard Bethany and Trevor cry out in fear. She instinctively moved to check on them, only to freeze when Kara caught her by the wrist.

“These tremors happen every time you doubt what you see, when something doesn’t fit. When pieces of the real world come back to you.”

Lena wrenched her hand away. “Stop it, Kara! My kids are real.”

“Do you remember meeting them?” Kara asked. “How long have they been with you? When did you adopt each of them?”

Lena blinked, and the room rumbled ominously. The ceiling cracked overhead, raining plaster dust on their heads as Lena wracked her brain trying to think, desperate to prove Kara wrong. She clearly remembered the scrawl of her signature on the dotted line, promising to raise and care for them. She kept all of their records in fastidious files… where? She shook her head, gripping the edge of the kitchen table to keep her feet.

“Who were their social workers?” Kara pressed. “When are their birthdays? The Mercy doesn’t waste energy on details, Lena. It relies on keeping you happy enough that you don’t question anything.”

Shaking her head, Lena clenched her eyes shut. That wasn’t true. Just because she couldn’t rattle details off the top of her head didn’t mean Kara was right. If she were, how would she know Bethany’s favorite shade of yellow, or that Deion hated hot dogs? She wouldn’t know Frankie’s moods like the back of her hand or Trevor’s fear of thunderstorms.

“Jack and I became foster parents…” That much she knew. The rest was inconsequential, one glance through their records would answer Kara’s questions.

“Lena…” Kara said softly. “Jack _died_. Please, remember. Biomax, it wasn’t safe. It killed him.”

No. Biomax worked. They’d succeeded. They launched over a year ago, and it had a success rate of… of…

_Lena, please! Do it!_

Jack popped up in front of her eyes, but not the one who’d woken up with her.

_Jack fell to his knees in a dark lab, crying out in pain._

Lena staggered as the floor bucked under her feet. The bedroom door slammed open, and her family came spilling out.

“Mama!” Bethany collided with Lena’s legs, trembling with fear.

Lena picked her up, holding her close to her chest. She moved to the living room, putting distance between them and Kara. Deion and Trevor stumbled in around her as the shaking continued, with Jack following only a few steps behind with Frankie and R.J.

Staring at each of them, Lena’s breath caught in her chest. She reached for the details and came up with nothing but hazy, half-formed images of nervous faces and terse introductions that eventually sharpened into happy smiles over the course months or years.

She recalled only fuzzy ideas of vacations and trips that had been so crystalline a few minutes before, memorialized in the photos that now lay in puddles of glass on the floor.

Lena couldn’t remember where the kids went to school, or even what block they lived on.

She didn’t know her anniversary with Jack, despite the rings glinting on her left hand.

_“If you go to National City, what happens to us?” Jack’s eyes burned angrily in the low light of her living room. “Do the past two years mean nothing to you?”_

_“Why does it have to be one or the other?”_

_“Are you really going to commute across the country every weekend? Do you expect_ **_me_ ** _to? God, Lena! I don't get it! Those people have looked down on you your entire life and now you’re just going to drop everything for them?”_

_Lena stared at Jack, eyes burning with tears. He didn’t understand. He didn’t understand that her family was disintegrating, and that the company--_ **_her_ ** _company-- was all she had left of them._

_“Jack…”_

_“I don’t know why I’m wasting my breath. You’ve already made your decision.” His eyes scraped at her like shards of flint. “I should have known you’d choose them. You always have.” He offered her a terse smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Your dad would be proud.”_

Lena pressed her eyes shut, shaking her head to clear the confusion. This was her life. This was the life she wanted. This was the life she’d made for herself.

Kara emerged from the kitchen, reaching from the counter to the kitchen table to keep her balance as the world shook.

“Kara, stop,” Lena begged. “Please, just stop.”


	4. Chapter 4

Kara didn’t know to expect this. When she put on the helmet Max Lord once created to save her life, she hadn’t known what to expect, but she hadn’t even considered… _this_. Not Lena in jeans and a soft blouse, with a long graceful necklace far different from the chunky jewelry she usually wore. Not the loose ponytail lying against a relaxed shoulder, softening Lena’s face and lending her a warm, approachable glow.

Not the handful of kids who looked nothing like Lena but clearly belonged, whose faces smiled at her from a thousand photos on the walls and mantel.

Not Jack Spheer, alive and breathing.  

Finding Lena unconscious in her office at L-Corp had seared through the haze that had enveloped Kara after seeing Mon-el lift off in the pod. The sight of the fleshy flower pressed against Lena’s chest silenced all higher brain function. Kara had lingered just long enough to scan the room for any further threat, but found only a black stone vessel--lid askew, half falling out of Lena's cabinet-- embossed with a Daxamite prayer of forgiveness.

Rhea absolved Lena of her betrayal, and granted her the sweetest of deaths.

Kara got Lena to the DEO in record time, and Alex had known what to do. Within minutes Lena had been hooked up to monitors and given an IV, and when Lord’s device was delivered by a sprinting DEO agent, Kara didn’t even bother debating who should be the one to use it.

James had warned against it, a sentiment echoed more gently by Alex, who reminded Kara that Lena had a lot of heartache to be exploited by the Black Mercy-- much of which revolved around the symbol on Kara’s chest. So when Kara laid back against the gurney and settled the visor over her head and eyes, she’d expected to step into a world dominated by Luthors-- Lex, Lionel, even Lillian.

But not this.

Not a cozy apartment brimming with contentment. Not a quiet morning without a single other Luthor in sight. Not the soft love evident in every word, every touch-- the kind Lena had spilling from her fingertips.

The kind anybody would cling to, once they found it.

_“Kara, stop,” Lena begged. “Please, just stop.”_

Kara’s breath seized in her chest. When she blinked, tears spilled onto her cheeks. Behind her eyes, she saw her parents’ quarters in Argo City, felt the phantom weight of their arms around her as they shielded her from the threat Alex presented.

_It’s not real, it’s not real…_ It was a mantra for herself as much as it was a plea to Lena. _It’s not real!_

“Lena, please, _please_ listen to me,” Kara begged. “This isn’t your family, and that isn’t Jack Spheer. It's just a construct, a shadow of who he was. You have to challenge it--”

“No, no, I can't...” Even as the whisper passed Lena’s lips, the building shook again.

“The Black Mercy will kill you!” Kara blurted, her throat clenching around the words. She started to shake when Lena snaked out an arm and tugged Trevor closer to her, who flinched against the shaking of the room, tears pouring down his cheeks. The other children pressed in around Lena, seeking contact and comfort.

“The Mercy will keep you trapped here in this world until it drains you completely. You’ll never wake up; you’ll die in a world that’s _not real,_ and Jack’s memory-- the _true_ Jack-- will die with you! _”_

One of Lena’s hands lifted from Bethany’s back to press against her temple. Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, even as her head shook no.

“It’s not real,” Kara repeated. She stared at the children surrounding Lena, reaching to their mother for comfort. She held Jack’s gaze, hating the concern and confusion she found in his eyes. “It’s not real-- no matter how much you want it to be.”

The room bucked, sending Kara to her knees. Lena staggered, kept upright only by Jack’s bracing hands on her shoulders. Bethany and Trevor sobbed against her.

“Lena!” The girl who had been reading on the couch when Kara entered called out, her voice sharp with alarm. Her stared at Lena with wide eyes. “Make it stop! Please!”

“You know I’m telling the truth!” Kara shouted over the growing rumble of a world falling apart. She shut her eyes, forcing herself to continue. “You felt it when I arrived. I felt it too. That was your mind warning you that something was wrong-- you’ve suspected something was wrong all along, you just didn’t know _what!”_

Kara’s voice rang sharply in the sudden silence.

She pried her eyes open, and found Lena alone with Jack, her features glassy with horror as her arms cradled nothing but air. Bethany had disappeared, along with her brothers and sister. For a long moment, none of them moved, shocked by what had happened. The next breath Lena took emerged as a gasp for air that rocked the building’s foundations.

Jack stepped solemnly into Lena’s view. Lena stared at him through a film of tears, searching his features as though seeing him for the first time.

_“Jack.”_

Jack took both of her hands, holding them against his chest. “Lena, Lena listen to me. It’s going to be okay...”

“Jack.” Lena’s voice trembled. “I’m so sorry...”

“Lena, no, listen to me… You were happy here, weren’t you?” Lena’s head bobbed yes, lips twisting in anguish even as Jack’s broke into an easy smile. “Then stay.”

Lena’s pale fingers curled around his, and Kara’s heart lurched. A wave of uncertainty washed through her. Lena was remembering, Lena realized that Kara was telling the truth-- but the fantasy remained, fracturing and shaking, but still holding together by the finest of threads. Kara struggled to reclaim her footing, staggering in place when the floor rippled under her.

“Lena, come with me, please!” she called. “You can’t let it win! The world needs you. National City needs you! _I need…_ ”

Kara’s voice gave out when Lena didn’t even look at her. She barely seemed to hear her. Tears slipped down Lena’s cheeks as she stepped into Jack’s arms. For a long moment, the world stopped quaking, and fell utterly, preternaturally still.

Jack’s gaze met Kara’s over Lena’s shoulder, and in them Kara saw a glimmer of dark triumph.

“Lena, NO!”

Kara lunged for Lena, but when she blinked, her eyes opened to darkness. Hands lifted the visor from her head, revealing the sterile confines of the DEO medlab and the concerned faces of Alex and Winn. Kara surged upright, Lena's name lodged in her throat. She froze at the sight of her friend still laid out on the next gurney over, still deathly pale, still unconscious. As she watched, the Black Mercy seemed to pulse happily, pleased at its own success..

With a roar, Kara surged towards it with hands outstretched, blinded by sudden rage.

“Whoa!” Winn cried sharply, moving to position himself between Kara and the plant, arms spread wide to block her from rending the flower to pieces.

“Kara, no!” Alex intercepted Kara before she could collide with Winn, her sister's arms wrapping around her tightly. “Removing it will kill her!”

Kara froze, and her anger cooled as quickly as it came. In its wake, ice pooled through her veins and she trembled, tears leaking from her eyes. “ _Lena…_ ”

“It’s okay,” her sister murmured. The arms restraining Kara softened into an embrace, working their way under Kara's cape. Kara sank into it as her chest started to heave.

“Alex! I was almost there-- I almost brought her back! Why did you--” The accusation caught in her chest. In an instant, Kara realized the truth. “You-- you didn’t pull me out, did you?” 

Alex shook her head. “No. You woke up on your own. You were under for hours-- what happened in there?”

Kara closed her eyes, and in the darkness behind her lids she saw the apartment again, the children whose faces were already losing definition. But Lena was still sharp and vivid, completely at home in a place where, instead of pouring her energies out into the world around her, she was able to soak it in. From Jack, from her kids… from easy hugs and affectionate smiles.

Lena had believed her. Kara knew it in her bones. But it hadn’t been enough. _She_ hadn’t been enough. She had failed, _again,_ just as she had against Rhea's invasion, just as she had with Mon-el.

Only this time, Lena would be the one to pay the price.


	5. Chapter 5

Lena clung to Jack. His arms wrapped around her, warm and solid and the smell of him filled her senses. His voice rumbled through their chests as he murmured soft reassurances. Around them, the building had fallen still, throwing the world into an eerie silence.

Closing her eyes, Lena could almost believe they were in Metropolis: before Lex was arrested, before the trial, before the truth of his crimes had come out, before she had shattered everything with her choice to move to National City. When it had just been the two of them.

“I love you,” Lena murmured.

Jack’s hands rubbed soft circles against her back. “I love you too,” he said. “So, so much…”

Leaning back, Lena brought her hands up to cup his face, feeling the prickle of his beard against her palms. She stared into his eyes, trying to shut out the destruction that she could see in her peripheral vision-- the remains of a perfect life, shattered beyond repair.

“I wanted this with you,” Lena told him. “All of it. I just didn’t know it yet.”

Jack’s features softened in a reassuring smile. “We can still have it. We _will._ ”

His hand smoothed her hair away from her eyes, trailing across her cheek. Lena leaned into his touch, her chest threatening to fold in on itself. She could almost pretend that night in Spheerical’s labs never happened, that she’d never felt the way his hand went limp in hers, as the life left his eyes.

Almost.

“I’m sorry,” Lena said. A low rumble started, deep in Lena’s chest then slowly spreading outward, rippling along the floor. Plaster dust snowed down around them, spilling from the cracked ceiling overhead. “I’m sorry I didn’t save you, Jack.”

The building listed violently. Lena stumbled, and only kept her feet by the grace of Jack’s hands on her shoulders.

“No, no, no, Lena, please--”

“I’m sorry…” She stepped out of his embrace. The building groaned, a sound ominous and distant. Her fingers trailed down his arm, tangling in his. “I’m so sorry…”

Lena forced herself to step away, tugging her hand free just as every window caved in at once. Lena ducked from the explosion of glass, flinching from the flying shards, but not one of them seemed to cut her skin.

The shaking began anew, now incessant and growing in magnitude. She didn’t know what was happening, didn’t know why or how, but in that same breath Lena knew this was the end. Choking back a sob, Lena stumbled away from Jack, struggling to keep her feet.

She turned stiffly to where Kara was waiting-- and froze at the sight of empty air where Kara had stood a moment before.

Lena cried out when fingers clamped painfully around her wrist. A sharp yank pulled her back to face Jack once more. Kindness still softened his features, at odds with the tightness of the grip around her wrist.

“Jack, let go.” She tugged at his hand. This time, Jack didn’t let her slip away. _Not Jack. Not real._ “Let go of me!”

Where was Kara? Lena searched the room for any sign of her friend, dust clouding her vision as the building itself seemed to seize. Not a single trace of Kara remained in the rubble.

“Lena, stay with me, please-- just stay,” Jack begged. The bones of her wrist ground together painfully. “You deserve this, you deserve to be happy!”

“You’re hurting me,” Lena gasped. Around them, the building rocked on its foundations, then gave altogether. The entire room listed to one side. Lena twisted against Jack’s grip, pulling at his fingers. “Jack, let _go!”_

The pressure on her wrist vanished. Lena staggered into the couch, sending it sliding towards the wall as the room continued to tilt, slowly losing its structural integrity. She recoiled from Jack’s reach, but the grab never came. Drawing herself up, Lena saw through the growing cloud of dust that Jack had vanished. Just like Kara. He was gone.

“Jack…” Lena turned in a circle, surveying the rapidly dilapidating room around her. Trevor’s video game had vanished, as had Frankie’s book-- the sofa where they’d sat just minutes before was bare under the crumbled fragments of drywall scattered across the cushions. The pictures were gone too, leaving empty frames and shattered glass behind.

“Kara?” she coughed, dust clogging her lungs. Lena's heart pounded as the floor cracked, opening a massive fissure that stretched from one end of the room to the other, swallowing the kitchen table on its way. _“Kara!”_

The last thing Lena saw was her home crumbling down around her.

* * *

_“Guys? We’ve got movement!”_

Lena heard before she saw. The voice sounded familiar, but echoed oddly. An intense weight pressed down on her, sitting on her chest like a rock. Something tightened on her neck for a harrowing moment, then released. The weight tipped off of her, sliding away to one side.

_“Whoa!”_ A zap followed, then the smell of something burning. _“It was already going to die, did you really have to-- you know what, it doesn’t matter.”_

She knew that voice, but no name could break through the fog in Lena’s brain. Lena struggled to open her eyes. It took long moments, to remember which muscles controlled what. When her eyelids finally responded, they opened on a room that was too bright, too sharp.

She shut them again instantly.

“Lena!”

_Kara._

There was a tumult of murmurs that Lena couldn’t follow. She pried her eyes open again, this time squinting against the light. Everything was a blur, smearing shadows and smudges across her vision. A hand touched her shoulder.

_Kara._

“Miss Luthor? Lena, can you hear me?”

Not Kara.

Something damp coated her mouth and nose. With clumsy fingers Lena reached up to wipe it away, and met with the odd, smooth shape of something plastic. Panic edged in against the fog. Lena clawed at the mask, until her nails found the elastic band strapping it to her face and fumbled it off.

Almost immediately, it was harder to breathe. Lena coughed, and groaned when the jarring woke a wave of fire in her chest.

“Okay, easy,” the voice came again, the same not-Kara. “Take slow, steady breaths… That’s it.”

This time, Lena kept her eyes open until they were able to focus, and someone’s face came into view. It was a long, muddy moment before Lena realized it was Agent Danvers. Her hand settled in Lena’s palm.

“Lena, my name is Agent Danvers. You’re at a secure facility. You’re safe.” The hand tightened minutely. “Can you try giving my fingers a squeeze?”

Lena obeyed, on reflex more than anything else. She struggled to expand her focus from just Danvers’ face, and saw another familiar set of features. _Winn?_

_Kara._

Disentangling her hand from Agent Danvers’, Lena struggled to shove herself upright. Her chest erupted in agony, but she pushed through it, managing to roll onto one elbow. Something pulled at her forehead and temples; scraping a hand over her face, half a dozen wires peeled away from her skin before falling from numbed fingers.

“Kara,” she said. Her voice was little more than a whisper.

Agent Danvers hand moved to Lena’s shoulder. “Miss Luthor…”

“Kara was there, I saw her,” she choked out. “Where… is she okay?”

“Lena!”

Kara’s voice pulled Lena’s eyes back up, searched the room for her friend. Her gaze slid off Supergirl to the empty gurney behind her. She saw a headset sitting on the bare table, traced the wires draping from it. They spanned the divide between beds and terminated in the leads Lena had just torn from her own skin, one of which still clung to the edge of one finger.

“Lena…” There came Kara’s voice again, just as heartbroken, just as tearful as when she’d called to Lena in the-- the…

Jack’s face flashed before her eyes. _Not real._

“Lena, I’m so sorry.”

All she found was Supergirl, with tears pouring down her cheeks, lips trembling. Her arms hugged herself tightly as she shook with silent sobs. For a split second, Lena’s stomach dropped, believing the worst had happened-- that Kara had died. Or that it was all a dream, even her, even this place.

But even as the thought occurred to her, Lena knew it was real. This room felt different than her home with Jack. That world had been warm and inviting, like it had been built for her. This place... this place was too harsh, too caustic to be imagined. This place was real, and so Kara should be here and yet wasn’t--

In one singular, interminable moment, the world clicked, and Lena understood.

She understood that the device sitting on the gurney, with its leads stretched between them, had facilitated Kara’s presence in that fantasy. Lena understood that Kara’s physical presence would have been necessary to transmit her consciousness. She understood that Supergirl’s tears weren’t because something had happened to Kara, but were shed for another reason entirely.

All of which coalesced into a total comprehension that shifted Lena’s worldview onto a new axis: one in which Supergirl’s tears, her eyes, belonged to someone else.

Lena’s eyes fell to the glyph on Supergirl’s chest, then lifted back up to meet the gaze of Kara Danvers.

_“Oh my god.”_

Realization pulled like a moan from her throat. Supergirl’s face-- _Kara’s--_ blanched. Lena didn’t need confirmation; she knew with all certainty that she finally, finally saw the truth. But in that single flinch, Lena had all the confirmation she could ask for.

Lena’s throat tightened, and she shook her head. Tears clouded her vision then spilled over in the next heartbeat. She shook her head again, and again, until it was continuous, insistent-- as though the motion alone could erase the new knowledge filling her brain, consuming all else.

_Kara Danvers is Supergirl._

“Oh my god.”

Kara stepped towards her, her cape swishing behind her. “Lena, I’m sorry--”

Her fingers reached for Lena’s. Lena jerked away, recoiling in a reflex so vehement her stomach flipped. _“Don’t touch me.”_

Agent Danvers stepped between them, eclipsing Lena’s view of Kara. Lena lay back against the gurney in a sudden exhaustion, chest aching with an entirely new pain. All at once, the world felt like it was folding in on her again.

“Kara, please wait outside,” Agent Danvers said, her voice low, but firm. Clenching her eyes shut, Lena sensed the tense moment that passed, heard Kara’s hushed voice. She didn’t bother to listen, didn’t care. Finally, she heard bodies leave the room, leaving quiet in their wake. Agent Danvers’ hand returned, this time resting on the crook of Lena’s arm.

“Miss Luthor-- Lena… you are in a secure government facility. We believe you’ve been unconscious for several days. We haven’t been able to do a complete assessment of your condition, but there’s a good chance that you’ve suffered several broken ribs, and that you’re severely dehydrated. But give us a few hours to evaluate you, and get some more fluids in you, and you’ll start feeling better in no time.”

Jack’s death gaped like an open wound, and now in Lena's mind his face was now joined by five more. Already they felt so far away, and the person who had pulled her away from them--

Lena inhaled until her ribs twinged. Suddenly the world felt a million miles away, taking the hurt and confusion with it. She opened her eyes, and stared at the ceiling overhead.

“I don’t care,” Lena said numbly. “Just keep her away from me.”


	6. Chapter 6

Lena didn’t relent on her refusal to see Kara. She only stayed at the DEO overnight, leaving against medical advice before noon the next day, and in that time Alex enforced Lena’s request for privacy. Kara reluctantly kept her distance. Over the week that followed, her texts remained unanswered, not even being marked as read. When she switched to calling three days in, they went straight to voicemail.

Alex advised her to give Lena time. To give her enough space to process whatever she saw while under the influence of the Black Mercy, and adjust to the realization that Kara was Supergirl. According to Alex, Lena would reach out when she was ready, and until then Kara should just wait. And for anyone else, Kara would have listened. But for Lena...

Kara knew her best friend. She knew that if she let their silence persist too long, it would become impenetrable.

Throwing herself into rebuilding efforts around the city split Kara's time between clearing debris and helping search for missing pets and loved ones. She kept an eye out for looters, and crimes of opportunity as storefronts and homeowners rushed to repair doors and windows damaged in the invasion, but National City surprised her. Instead of turning in on itself, the residents came together to help each other. Crime slowed to a crawl, giving Kara all her time to focus on reconstruction-- and Lena.

After a week, Kara couldn't keep away any longer. When midnight came and went, and night crews confirmed they were okay to finish their shifts on their own, Kara didn't head for her apartment. Instead, she turned east, where a brightly lit "L" glared brilliantly at her. L-Corp's logo wasn't the only thing lit-- in moments Kara could discern the glow of Lena's desk lamp, low and gentle in an otherwise empty building. The soft light beckoned her, as it had every night that week as Lena worked until dawn.

The building had been repaired-- a quick scan confirmed most of the internal reconstruction was still ongoing, but the exterior and structural weaknesses had been fully repaired. The last time Kara had come this close, the night she'd found Lena, the balcony had been lopsided and precarious, and the office within strewn with debris from the Daxamites' final assault. There in the rubble she'd found Lena, ensnared by the Black Mercy and terrifyingly unresponsive.

Now hovering just beyond the repaired balcony, Kara banished the image of an unconscious Lena by locking her gaze on the figure sitting at her desk. Straight-backed and focused, Lena split her attention between her computer, tablet, and the pages of a project proposal spread open before her. She worked steadily, scrolling through her tablet with one hand as the other scribbled notes in the margins of the proposal.

From her position Kara could see the tension in Lena’s shoulders, but her movements were smooth and measured, even as she added a final note to the last page of the report and tucked them into a memo folder. Lena then rose to file it on a rack sitting under the television screen. When Lena stepped around her desk, her profile revealed features set like marble, heavy with an exhaustion Kara suspected had nothing to do with her workload or the late hour.

Kara set down on the balcony before she could think better of it. The repaired platform held her weight as she reached out to give the door a gentle knock. Startled by the unexpected sound, Lena jerked, then grimaced sharply when the reflex twinged her healing ribs. Through the glass, their eyes locked. Lena’s features didn’t shift at the sight of Kara on her balcony, and the longer Kara waited, the more she realized Lena had no intention of inviting her in. Eventually, Lena turned her back, selecting a new folder from the rack. Without a second look towards the window, she flipped through the bound pages, too quickly to actually be reading any of the information within.

Kara could leave. Alex’s voice in her head said she _should_ leave. But the louder, more desperate voice of her own guilt focused on the fact that while she hadn’t received an invitation, Lena hadn’t exactly turned her away either. Hooking her fingers around the door handle, Kara gave it an experimental tug. It opened.

“What do you want?” Lena asked without turning.

Kara drew to a stop only a few steps inside, acutely aware that her welcome was nonexistant, and any misstep could banish her. She brought her hands together in front of her, fidgeting with the sleeves of her suit.

“You haven’t answered any of my texts,” she said, hesitantly.

“And you thought that was code for you to come to my office at 3am?”

Kara flinched at the uncharacteristic steel of Lena's tone. A lump rose to her throat, the sudden pressure in her chest nearly strangling her. Kara swallowed, trying to clear it, and all the while, Lena refused to look at her. She slotted the file back onto the rack only to snatch up another one entirely before turning back to her desk.

“I wanted to check on you--” Lena brushed past her, and Kara hastily stepped aside to avoid the near collision. Then she edged further into the office to maintain the spatial buffer as Lena settled behind her desk once more. Kara tried again, voice grinding in her throat. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

Finally, Lena’s gaze lifted, pegging Kara with a dull look that hollowed Kara’s chest. “And how do you think I’m doing, Supergirl?”

When Kara failed to answer, Lena’s eyes slid away again. Her fingers tapped out an email on her keyboard, and swiftly hit send. Business as usual.

“After all, I’ve had such a stellar year, don’t you think?” Lena continued. “Let’s see… My brother wants me dead, my mother framed me for a felony. I started an alien invasion, and nearly got married off to my best friend’s boyfriend. Oh, and then I found out my best friend has been lying to me since the day I met her. Have I left anything out?”

She may as well have been reading off a grocery list, for all the emotion that came with it. Kara struggled to maintain eye contact, fighting the urge to look away as tears collected on her lashes. She searched Lena’s features for any clue as to what she was feeling, but came up empty. She saw none of the hurt she'd expected, none of the betrayal she'd hoped to explain away. 

“I know how hurt you must feel--”

“ _Wrong_.”

Green eyes skewered Kara to the spot, sharp and unyielding but still so, so cold. Then Kara was dismissed with a shrug of Lena’s eyebrows as she turned to reach for a binder from the cabinet behind her desk.

“I’m angry-- at myself more than anything else. I’m angry that I thought I could trust anybody in this city.”

She started flipping through the notebook with short flicks of her fingers, then paused to lock eyes with Kara once more.

“I tried making excuses for you, to justify to myself why my best friend wouldn't have told me the truth. I had so much to choose from: my family, my politics, your safety… How pathetic is that? Me, making excuses for Supergirl.”

“Lena…”

“Keeping Supergirl a secret was your prerogative,” Lena continued, shutting the binder with a snap. “But if that was your plan all along, you had no business being my friend.”

All the oxygen left Kara’s lungs in a whoosh. Her chest ached as though struck by a physical blow, but there was nothing but Lena and her inexpressive gaze. “I didn’t think that mattered.”

“What, a Luthor and a Super?”

The last time Lena had said those words, she’d been smiling and proud. Now they were knives, stabbing against Kara’s senses.

“It wouldn’t, if Supergirl and Kara Danvers had been equal acquaintances. But they weren’t, were they?”

Lena watched her, and Kara squirmed under her gaze. “No,” Lena answered for her. “Supergirl remained cool and aloof, and Kara Danvers wormed her way ever closer. She was so eager to hear all my fears about becoming like my family. Must have been a good laugh at the bar, huh?”

“Lena, _no_ \-- That isn’t--”

“You can tell yourself whatever you need to feel better,” Lena dismissed with a wave of her hand, completely uninterested in any denial Kara could offer. “But we both know that I shared things with _Kara Danvers_ that I never would have shared with a Super.”

This time, Lena’s gaze didn’t fall away. They remained riveted on Kara as her skin started to crawl under her suit, unable to respond. Now, Lena’s lips thinned, pressing tightly together as the first hint of true anger edged into her expression.

“I deserved to know who I was talking to,” she accused. “But you had all the power. _All_ of the control. _You_ decided who I was speaking to. And despite all your platitudes about believing my intentions have been and will be good, you still chose to keep me in the dark. You violated _my_ trust.”

Silence hung between them as Lena stared at Kara, and Kara tried to find the words to refute the accusations. She couldn’t. It was true. She’d never considered what it would be like; Lena hadn’t had all the pieces, and her consent to share her life with Kara Danvers didn’t necessarily extend to Supergirl.

“How long would you have kept up the pretense?” Lena asked. Her fingers tightened around her pen until the plastic casing groaned. “If I hadn’t put it together, if whatever that thing was hadn’t attacked me-- would you have ever told me the truth?”

Kara blinked, spilling tears down her cheeks. “I--” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Just like that, the tendrils of anger snapped out of sight, returning Lena’s features to stone.

“Yeah,” she said softly. She held Kara’s gaze. “That’s about what I expected.”

She opened the binder again, this time using it for reference as she typed on her computer. Kara shook her head no. She refused to be shut down so easily. “Lena, please, I came here to explain, to apologize! I’m so sorry--”

“Fuck your apology.” Lena didn’t look up from the chart under her fingers. “I’m not interested.”

“Lena, please…” Kara took a deep breath, clenching her fists to keep her fingers from shaking. “Please, just listen to me. You are my friend. My best friend. That much is true. It always has been.”

“You know what gets me?” Lena said, pausing in her typing. “When I was under the influence of whatever that thing was-- you were the one who showed up to convince me it wasn’t real. And then I woke up only to find out that you’re less real than they were.”

Lena’s voice coarsened as she finished-- tears clouded her eyes for a split second before she blinked.

“Now instead of living happily with people I love, I’m back in a world where I’m hated and alone. How’s that for karmic justice?”

Kara took a step forward, but froze when Lena turned away. She wiped at her eyes, smearing damp tears across her cheeks. “You’re not alone, Lena.”

“No, Kara.” Lena’s voice was dull, but firm, solemn in her certainty. “That is exactly what I am.”

“Lena…”

“Get out of my office.” Lena dipped her head head towards the balcony, indicating that Kara could leave the same way she came in.

In that moment, Kara realized Alex was right: she shouldn’t have come. Not while Lena was grieving Jack’s death a second time. Not while she grieved the children she'd never met. Not while she grieved the death of their friendship as they knew it. Once upon a time, Kara had sat with Lena on the white couch somewhere behind her, when Lena had been similarly closed off. But even then, when the grief had been sharp and unfamiliar, Lena had never seemed so hollow.

Kara slowly edged towards the door. Lena tapped on her tablet, waking the screen and returning to her work. She didn't give Kara a second glance, even when Supergirl hesitated with her hand on the door.

“Lena…”

Lena sat forward in her seat, eyes on her tablet as she spoke.

“Don’t come back.”


	7. Chapter 7

After that, Kara kept her distance. Alex still urged Kara to give it time, promising that Lena would reach out before long. So Kara waited, her insides in knots. She stayed away from L-Corp, stayed away from Lena. She went to work at CatCo in the morning, became Supergirl in the evenings and served the city until the small hours of the night, then crashed for a few hours before getting up to do it all over again. She refused to look at L-Corp’s sign when the sun went down, refused to acknowledge the desklamp she knew would still be on when she went home.

Alex’s predictions never came true. Lena didn't text. She didn't call. When L-Corp hosted a press conference to announce the installation of a Supergirl memorial at the waterfront, CatCo’s invitation was accompanied by the ultimatum that a new representative be sent to cover the event. Kara watched from her living room, wilting at the sight of Lena’s smile on the other side of the screen. No one else seemed to notice the dull glaze in her eyes, or the way her jaw tightened when her friendship with Supergirl was mentioned by a reporter during the Q&A.

Kara turned it off as soon as the feed cut to the CatCo anchor desk, unable to watch anymore. She sent James and Alex a short text before launching herself out the window and angling south, where the Fortress of Solitude waited to receive her with frigid arms. She returned three days later, feeling no more at ease than when she’d left.

On the cusp of the fourth week of radio silence, Kara risked another visit. Dropping by unannounced could make everything worse. Again. But this time felt different. In the Fortress of Solitude, Kara remembered what it had felt like to awaken from the Black Mercy. She remembered, and the memory scared her; she feared what it meant for Lena.

Waiting until sundown meant she avoided the hordes of employees heading home. This time, she entered through the lobby as Kara Danvers, not Supergirl. She knew Lena would still be in her office, and wasn’t surprised to see Jess still at her desk as well. What surprised her was that Jess seemed relieved to see her, instead of preparing to kick her out. Jess rose to her feet as the elevator doors closed behind Kara, crossing quickly to meet her.

“Jess, is everything okay?” Kara asked. Her eyes darted to the closed office doors behind her, which revealed nothing as to what lay inside.

Jess hesitated, lips thinning to a concerned line. “Miss Luthor has cleared her schedule the past two days,” she told Kara in a low voice. “She’s citing reconstruction, but final repairs finished last week. I’m worried. This isn’t like her.”

Alarm thundered in Kara’s chest, her pulse picking up into a slow gallop. It may not mean anything, she tried to tell herself, but the unflappable, impassive Jess looked to her in concern, uncertain and worried. Her worry leached into Kara, sinking its teeth into the fears that had brought her here in the first place.

“Okay,” Kara forced out, the words sticking in her suddenly dry mouth. “Is she alone right now?”

Jess nodded. “She told me to go home hours ago, but I didn’t-- I was worried to leave her alone. Did she ask you to come?”

Kara swallowed thickly. “Not exactly.” She reached out and touched Jess’ elbow in reassurance. “I’m sure everything’s fine.”

Despite her words, Kara couldn’t shake the apprehension curling in her stomach as she approached the closed double doors standing between her and the woman inside. She felt Jess’ eyes boring a hole between her shoulder blades, the assistant’s anxious concern palpable behind her. Kara paused before knocking. Casting her senses beyond the heavy wooden doors, she heard Lena’s heartbeat. It eased the worst of the fear that gripped Kara by the throat.

Letting her knuckles connect sharply with the door, Kara didn’t wait to for a response before opening the door. The office within stood lifeless, the phone quiet and the various screens dark and blank. The desk lamp still glowed, but the seat it illuminated was empty. Kara’s fear returned full force, her gaze darting to the balcony-- it too stood empty, until Kara made her way closer and finally spotted Lena’s form leaning against the furthest end of the platform.

Lena stood still as a statue against the rail, staring out not at the buildings across the way, but instead faced the far end of the balcony, gazing along the length of Cordova Street. She didn’t turn when Kara pushed through the door to join her on the balcony; her heartbeat thudded calm and clear in Kara’s ears, as though she didn’t register Kara’s arrival at all.

The night was darker than it typically was in National City. Though most of the buildings in this sector had been repaired, their occupants were fewer at this time of night, workers preferring to return home to their loved ones-- or oversee repairs to their residences. More lights stayed off, and fewer cars traveled the streets below, encapsulating them both in a pocket of eerie quiet.

Struggling to offer words of comfort, Kara clutched the strap of her purse awkwardly. The words she’d prepared suddenly felt hollow. They wouldn’t mean much coming from her anymore; mere platitudes wouldn’t crack through the walls separating them. Lena simply wouldn’t hear them past the truths Kara had kept hidden for so long.

“My planet died when I was twelve years old.”

It wasn’t what she expected to say. Kara’s voice caught, and she heard Lena’s breath hitch ever so slightly at the sound of her voice. It was the only acknowledgement Kara received-- Lena didn’t turn, or react to her presence in any other way.

Again, bolstered by the lack of an outright dismissal, Kara continued.

“My family put my cousin and I into pods and sent us to Earth. I lost everyone I ever knew that day. Even my cousin. When I landed, I was a stranger to him. Only my aunt and her husband survived, because they had been imprisoned months before in the Phantom Zone.”

In her mind’s eye, she saw her aunt’s face, more clear and vivid than anything she remembered of her mother. Not as she’d last seen her, gasping and bleeding on the pavement of the dark garage roof she’d died on, but how she’d appeared in the fantasy of Krypton, in the robes Astra had favored most. She felt the gentle embrace of both her mother’s and aunt’s arms around her, warm and shielding her from Alex.

Kara clenched her eyes shut, banishing the tears that rose suddenly to burn at her eyes.

“While I was growing up with Alex and her parents, my aunt and uncle prepared to kill all human life on Earth. When he realized I would stand against them, Non left a Black Mercy in my apartment. It brought me back to Krypton. The planet had survived, and my aunt had never been arrested. I’d gotten the chance to watch my cousin grow.”

As she spoke, the smell of Argos City’s recycled air filled her nostrils. It lacked the smell of earth and water that so characterized her new home, but also eliminated the impurities of smoke and exhaust; it was purified for their consumption, just one more way they had masked the imminent demise of their planet. Kara still missed it.

“Alex was the one who came for me. She saved my life, but-- I lost them all over again.”

Kara’s voice cracked. She sniffled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. The familiar ache of their loss opened a pit in her chest, threatening to pull her in and never spit her back out again. She cleared her throat forcefully, steamrolling forward before she could be mired in grief.

“When I had the chance to save the world from Myriad, I took it,” she said plainly. “I flew Fort Rozz into space, expecting to die. Welcoming it, even, because I was sure I would return to my family in Rao’s light.”

Lena didn’t respond. From where Kara stood, she could see how Lena’s frame had tightened, muscles slowly contracting as Kara spoke. Her face remained hidden, her silhouette all Kara could see, but even that much was enough for Kara to know Lena heard.

“Alex saved me again, using the same pod I’d landed in twelve years earlier. She did it out of love, and I tried to be grateful, but I was so _angry_. For a long time, all I could feel was anger. And I couldn’t tell her or anyone else the truth. That I was angry she’d pulled me away from them, again.”

Kara’s voice cracked again on the words she’d never spoken aloud-- the truth she’d hidden from every single person in her life. Her chest ached with the release of it. Kara loved her sister; she loved her life. And still she’d been so angry that Alex had taken her choice from her, denying her the chance to return to her family.

It wasn’t Alex’s fault. How could it be? All she’d seen was Kara making an impossible choice for the good of the planet, with no way to return. She’d had no reason to ask if Kara _wanted_ to return, and Kara didn’t have the strength now to confess the truth.

On the other side of the balcony, Lena finally moved. Her head dipped, the motion small but monumental from the woman who had been little more than a statue since Kara arrived. It gave Kara hope, and prompted her to continue.

“But now, I’m so grateful she did. Because if she-- if she hadn’t… If I’d died that day like I wanted? I wouldn’t have met you.”

A gust of sudden wind buffeted Kara’s ears, but couldn’t eclipse the sound of Lena’s exhalation, sharp and jagged. Though Lena couldn’t see it, Kara smiled, reaching up to scrub her cheeks dry.

“I met you, and as I got to know you, I got to be myself. Kara Danvers. It’s been the one part of my life that feels like I’ve actually been living. Supergirl is something I do for others, an obligation that’s eclipsed almost every other part of my life. But when I’m with you, I-- I’ve been _happy_. And one day I realized that if Alex hadn’t come for me that day, I would never have gotten a chance to meet you. And I’m so glad I did.”

A scoff of air escaped Lena, her head shaking in disbelief. Kara took an earnest step towards her. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Lena. No matter my reasons, nothing changes the fact that it hurt you. That _I_ hurt you. And I am so sorry.”

Below them, sirens wailed. Kara’s muscles seized in reflex, instinctively itching to launch into the sky and save the day. But this time, she didn’t budge. She was already where she was needed most.

“I’m still Kara,” Kara assured her. “I’ve always been Kara. Everything that made us friends is still there.”

Finally, _finally,_ Lena turned to face her. Kara took in the sight of red, swollen eyes, lips tight with anguish. Lena’s shoulders scrunched defensively, making her seem small against the rail, despite her tall heels.

“What do you want from me?”

Her voice came soft and hoarse across the narrow platform. The balcony was smaller than Cat’s, but somehow felt more intimate. There was nowhere to hide here, no way to disguise the raw hurt in her friend’s voice.

“Your forgiveness.” Kara reached for her, needing the contact, ready to step through the door that had opened the tiniest crack. She froze when Lena stiffened, and slowly retracted her hand. Instead she gripped her purse strap once more, gathering herself into a tight bundle.

“I understand if you can’t give that yet,” she continued softly. “All I’m asking is for the chance to earn it. And for you to not give up.”

Lena’s mask cracked. Her lips twisted as tears suddenly spilled over and a sob popped out of her, sharp and unexpected. With that small sound, the floodgates opened, and the sobs kept coming. This time, Lena didn’t pull away when Kara stepped in. She leaned into Kara’s embrace, welcoming the contact as the dam broke and anguish came pouring out.

Kara held her as tightly as she dared, murmuring her apologies over and over. She held Lena until the tears slowly diminished. When she had caught her breath again, Lena pulled back, scrubbing her cheeks with sharp, jerking movements. She avoided Kara’s gaze, turning her body away to face the rail again. This time, Kara was allowed a profile, not her back. Her lips quivered, as though on the verge of more tears, and her hands gripped the rail so tightly her bones creaked in Kara’s ears. It hurt Kara’s heart to see it, but it was better than the controlled apathy of the last time they’d spoken.

The door was still open, however slight the gap, and Kara moved quickly to step through it before it closed again.

“Come home with me tonight, please,” she urged. “We can talk--”

“I’d rather be alone,” Lena countered in a low voice. Even as she said it her entire body seemed to sag.

Kara stared at her, undaunted. “You’ve been alone for weeks,” she pointed out. “Has that helped yet?”

Lena didn’t respond, except to turn her chin away, hiding her face from Kara’s gaze.

“We don’t have to talk,” Kara amended. “Just…”

Lena shook her head sharply, and Kara bit back a sigh of frustration.

“Lena, you have been here every night for the past month. Jess says you’ve been canceling meetings, and that’s not you. However you feel about me right now, you _love_ L-Corp.”

For a split second derision twisted Lena’s features, and her lips parted as though about to speak. But an instant later, the derision froze, and was eclipsed by heartache once again. She blinked, eyelashes sparking, and looked away.

“You need a break,” Kara persisted, “and you shouldn’t do it alone.” She let her voice gentle, until it was little more than a whisper. “Please, stay with me tonight.”

For a long moment, nothing happened. Lena didn’t move, didn’t speak-- she left Kara to stand there on the verge of hope. Tears still glinted at the corners of her eyes, bitterly clinging to damp eyelashes. Standing this close, Kara could see the hurt lurking underneath her anger. She saw the grief of losing a family that never was-- a family that never could be, with Jack Spheer dead and buried.

With a final sniff, Lena’s features firmed, coming to a silent decision. Kara dodged as Lena pushed past her, reentering her office interior with determined strides. Kara followed at a respectful distance, flinching when Lena stabbed at her phone with one finger.

“Jess,” Lena said without preamble. “Leave. Now.”

“Yes, Miss Luthor.”

Lena shut the intercom off almost before Jess finished speaking. A glance over her glasses showed Kara the antechamber on the far side of the wall, where Jess quickly gathered her things and departed. Lena gathered her own jacket and purse as well. When she had all her items in hand, she stood stiffly behind her desk, waiting for Kara to lead the way out.

“Oh,” Kara said. She hadn’t expected Lena to accept her invitation-- or still look so angry doing it. “Okay.”

Lena picked up on her surprise with sour twist of her lips. “Unless you were lying about that too.”

“No,” Kara said quickly. “No, of course not.” She nodded, and quickly strode towards the door. “Let’s go home.”


	8. Chapter 8

When they slid into the back seat of a taxi, Kara scootched in first, as she always did. But instead of sliding across the bench towards her, Lena kept herself pressed against the door. Kara tried not to stare, acutely aware of their forced proximity, but from the corner of her eye she watched as Lena’s anger shifted sadness, deep and fathomless.

When the cab pulled to a stop on Hope Street, Lena straightened with a thick sniff and pushed out of the car. Kara paid the driver and trotted after her. The trek up the stairs to Kara’s apartment was silent and awful; Kara hated it almost as much as the way Lena stood deflated in the hallway as Kara unlocked the door.

Inside, Lena ditched her purse by the shoe station with uncharacteristic abandon, sparing less than a blink when the bag spilled onto one side. Kara observed her in the fresh light of her apartment, and her chest twinged at the dull, glassy eyes hooded by reddened lids.

“Lena…”

“ _No_.” Lena’s hoarse voice scraped against Kara's ears.

Kara swallowed thickly, but nodded without protest. “Okay,” she said softly. “There’s still a pair of your pajamas from last move night if you--”

The thud of the bedroom door closing answered her before she could finish. Inside, Kara could see Lena’s brisk motions as she found the drawer and yanked out the hoodie and leggings she’d left behind the last time she’d spent the night. Every motion screamed that Lena didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to be in Kara’s home, didn’t want to see her or talk to her. Kara half-expected Lena not to re-emerge, but she did, clad in her maroon MIT sweatshirt and her hair down.

She sat at the breakfast bar while Kara got busy making the hot chocolate. They didn’t speak, didn’t look at each other. When Kara slid the cocoa in front her-- minus marshmallows-- Lena made no move to take it. Her fingers twisted together on the table in front of her, her gaze glued to her hands, dark and heavy. Kara gripped the sides of her own mug. The heat from the cocoa seeped through the ceramic, warming her palms. There, they sat for a long time, until Kara’s mug went cold and Lena’s stopped steaming, completely untouched.

Kara’s ears thundered with the hitch of Lena’s breath, the way it rattled in her chest as her lips pulled and twisted against the tears that welled in her eyes. Kara felt her own eyes burn, unable to offer comfort.

Finally, Kara stood, surreptitiously wiping her nose. “I’m, ah-- I’ll go make up the bed.”

Lena didn’t respond, not that Kara expected her to. She escaped into the bedroom, pausing just inside the door to catch her breath. When her knees stopped shaking, she remade the bed with fresh linens. With her speed she could have had it done in seconds, but Kara took her time, all the while trying to convince herself she wasn’t avoiding Lena.

When the bed was ready, Kara pulled out a separate set for her own use-- if Lena accepted her bed, then she would spend the night on the couch. She paused for another deep breath before she ventured back into the kitchen, steeling herself for round two.

She froze at the sight of the vacant breakfast bar. Lena’s seat sat empty, cocoa still sitting untouched on the table. Turning, Kara spotted Lena sitting against the window next to the telescope, dead asleep. The steady thump of Lena’s heart beat stayed the words on Kara’s lips. However uncomfortable that ledge may be compared to the bed Kara had prepared, she didn’t dare wake her.

With slow, easy movements, Kara instead grabbed the blanket off the sofa and ever so carefully draped it over Lena’s lap. Lena didn’t stir, but her sleep remained anything but peaceful. A crinkle lived between her eyebrows, and Kara’s stomach lurched when the lamplight filtering in from outside glinted against the pockets of tears gathered at the corners of her eyes.

_What was she doing?_

How could she fix what she’d broken when Lena could barely stand to look at her? The fact she was here, safe in Kara’s apartment, was a stop-gap at best. She’d be lucky if Lena stayed for breakfast the next morning, and what would happen the next time Lena stepped onto her office balcony? She didn’t know what to do, where to go from there.

A tight knot swelled and pressed against the back of Kara’s sternum, threatening to strangle her.  Burying her head in her arms, Kara felt the dam break. Tears started to fall, silent and seemingly endless.

She cried for Lena’s hurt, for the fantasy she lost.

She cried for her own family on Krypton, revisited and lost again in her own Black Mercy.

She cried for herself, because Lena hasn’t forgiven her, and likely wouldn’t.

As the tears kept coming, Kara pressed ever closer to where Lena’s leg draped over the edge of the window seat, close enough to count the threads that comprised her leggings, but not enough to banish the feeling that the whole of the Phantom Zone lay between them. Though they nearly touched. Kara had never felt more alone.

* * *

Lena woke with a start, as she had every morning since the invasion. The lingering press of phantom arms around her waist and soft hair tickling her nose with the fragrance of baby shampoo disappeared, leaving her shivering against the chill of the window pane under her shoulder. Even as she reached for the echo of her dream, desperate for even the memory of warmth, it evaporated like smoke.

Dried tears had crusted around her eyes, and she scrubbed them away with the heel of her hand, until the room warped and black spots temporarily dotted her vision. When they cleared, Lena realized that the unfamiliar shape leaning against the sill next to her legs was Kara, still asleep with tears of her own drying tracks down her cheeks. The sight of her clenched a fist around Lena’s heart.

It was a mistake to come here. It hadn’t done any good, and spending the night probably made Kara think things were better between them. Sharp claws of shame dug themselves into Lena’s stomach, twisting painfully as her mind flashed back to that moment in the DEO labs, when she’d finally, painfully pieced it together for herself-- and the sight of Kara’s stricken expression when Kara had realized she’d made the connection.

_“...Would you have ever told me the truth?”_

_Kara blinked, spilling tears down her cheeks. “I--” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”_

It wasn’t just that Lena had let herself be duped so easily. Picking apart every conversation they’d had, it had quickly become evident that Kara had barely kept a lid on her precious secret. Little hints to her true identity peppered nearly every interaction Lena could recall.

_Supergirl was there too..._

_I flew here… on a bus_.

_I was getting coffee with Kara Danvers when you called._

It went on and on… And still Lena hadn’t seen. Her mother would call it willful ignorance, and for once, Lena couldn’t dispute it. The truth had been under her nose the whole time, just like with Lex. With Rhea. She just hadn’t wanted to see it. She had been so dazzled by someone wanting to be her friend that she’d let herself overlook all the red flags, all the clues.

It wasn’t just that Kara had kept the truth from her. As her history showed, Lena was no stranger to secrets. It was that now she realized that Kara knew how she’d resisted the accusations against her mother last Thanksgiving. Kara knew that she hadn’t wanted to believe her mother could do such horrible things, even after her brother had already done much worse. It was that Supergirl had glimpsed her secrets, the truths Lena feared lurked within herself.

Now both Kara _and_ Supergirl knew how alike Lena and her mother truly were. How alike Lena and Lex were.

A lump rose to Lena’s throat. She shouldn’t have come here.

Lena shoved away from the window, stepping over Kara’s legs. She made it to the bathroom before Kara roused, but when she emerged with her hands full of her discarded clothes from the night before, Kara was awake and on her feet. Lena barely paused before crossing past her to collect her bag. As she shoved her clothes inside her purse, she heard Kara let out a huff of frustration behind her.

“Lena…”

“Don’t.” Lena’s hoarse voice wavered dangerously. Her blouse flopped out of her bag, and Lena shoved it back inside and tamped it down. “Just don’t. I don’t want to hear it.”

“Maybe not, but you need to--”

“As much as I appreciate the crying jag last night, it doesn’t make what you did right.” Lena glared. She scraped her hair into a low ponytail before bending over to jam her feet back into her pumps. “That’s the bottom line.”

“You think I don’t know that?!”

With a scoff, Lena snatched up her bag and slung it over her shoulder as she pivoted towards the door. Just as her hand gripped the metal handle, Kara burst.

“Will you STOP running away from me?!”

Lena froze. Her spine stiffened to steel, shoulders squaring down and back. She didn’t turn, but every one of her senses focused on the woman behind her. She heard Kara take a step back, alarmed by her own outburst. She reclaimed the step barely a moment later, but didn’t come any further than that.

“Please, Lena.” Kara’s voice thickened, brimming with tears. “Please, just-- just talk to me.”

Perfectly measured, Lena spoke into the door. “What is there to say?”

“ANYTHING! How hurt you are, how mad you are! Literally anything! You can say you hate me or you hate my cousin--”

“ _Don’t_ put words in my mouth!”

“Then say _something!_ Tell me whatever you were going to tell me last night when I reminded you how much you love L-Corp!”

“You want to know what I was going to say?” Lena snapped, snatching her hand from the doorknob and whirling to face her. “Really?”

Kara glared right back at her, undaunted. “Yes! What was it??”

_“That I loved my kids more!”_

The words left Lena in a whoosh, ringing in the silence that followed. Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, and this time she didn’t bother to check them. She glared at Kara, clinging to the rage that had suddenly found oxygen.

“My entire body aches for children who don’t even exist! I’m mourning a life I never had, because of _you!”_

Kara stared at her, features frozen in a rictus of shock and hurt.

“You _lied_ to me! Our entire friendship is based on lies! None of this would have happened if you’d just been _honest_ with me!”

“I-- I know--”

“Do you?! Do you know that I called you when I discovered Rhea wasn’t human? For advice on whether I should trust her anyway. Of course, I got the inevitable brush-off-- I can only imagine what business Supergirl had that made it such an inconvenient time to reach out.”

Kara flinched, and Lena reveled in her discomfort.

“At the time I figured it didn’t matter anyway. After all, I knew exactly what Kara Danvers would say. If only I had known you were a little more judicious with your trust than you let on! Surely _Supergirl_ would have something different to say about the woman who wanted to _invade the planet!”_

Lena finished with a sharp inhale, the gasp scraping the insides of her chest. Tears coursed down Kara’s cheeks, but Lena’s had dried. All she had left was anger, and even then she felt it beginning to cool, tempering to lead in her stomach.

“Is that enough for you, Kara?” she asked, her voice low and hoarse. “Or shall I continue? Do you need to hear how I feel like an absolute idiot? That I’ve been beating myself up for weeks for being so goddamned naive?” Lena swallowed painfully. “Would that make you feel better?”

Kara’s head shook, dislodging more tears. “N-no.”

Shoulders lifting in a helpless shrug, Lena shook her head. Calm returned, steady and sure and empty. “Then I don’t know what else there is to say.”

She waited, just a beat, for Kara to respond. When she didn’t, Lena turned back towards the door. This time, she was able to get it open before Kara reached for her one last time.

“So that’s it?” A sniffle followed, and the rustle of cotton as Kara wrapped her arms around herself. “An entire year of friendship gone, just like that?”

Lena shook her head. “I’m not the villain here, Kara.”

“That’s not what I’m doing. You’re right to be angry with me, Lena. To be upset and hurt by what I’ve done.”

Now, Kara’s voice sounds like hers. Steady and calm, if a little thick with tears. As though she sensed this was the end-- one way or the other.

“I accept that,” Kara continued, “and I understand that there’s no magic words I can say today to make it all better. But what happens next is up to you. You can walk out that door and never talk to me again. That’s your choice. And I’ll respect that, if that’s what you want.”

Kara moved towards her, but stopped short when Lena stiffened.

“ _Is_ that what you want?”

Silence draped itself between them. The only sounds were the rush of cars passing out the window, and the laugh of children waiting for their school bus. Lena closed her eyes.

What did she want?

Behind her eyes, Lena saw glimpses of sleepy smiles in the warm glow of a lazy Sunday morning. Syrupy hands reaching for bacon, and tousled heads bent low over science projects. Shoulders brushing on the sofa, and crowded beds at night.

Jack’s warm eyes smiling at her across the pillow.

Lena swallowed painfully. Her mother would scoff at her if she knew Lena was clinging to those false memories. She herself knew that no good would come of holding them so close to her heart, and yet… letting them go would mean forgetting, and Lena wasn’t ready to do that.

So then what did she want?

She wanted her best friend back. She wanted Kara’s promises to her to be real. She wanted to be as certain of Kara’s affections for her as she’d been a month ago. But she couldn’t have that any more than she could have Jack or the children they’d loved together.

And if she couldn’t have that, she wanted to stop hurting. She wanted to cut ties to everything she dared to care about. She wanted to walk out that door and never look back, to keep walking until she was an ocean away, where no one knew her name or cared who her goddamn family was. Where Superman and Supergirl were some American myth people rolled their eyes at in the bars.

Lena shifted her grip to clutch the edge of the door, ready to fling it open and storm through it.

_You deserve this. You deserve to be happy._

Jack’s voice whispered at the edges of her mind, filling Lena’s eyes with tears. The Jack in that fake world had nearly screamed those words at her, but the voice in her head was the real Jack-- _her_ Jack. The one who had given her a cupcake for her birthday the first year they worked together, who had watched her stunned stare with a grin on his lips, and then held her hand when she’d quietly broken down into tears.

_You deserve to be happy._

Slowly, Lena palmed the door shut. It clicked shut, the click almost deafening in the quiet. Behind her, Lena could hear Kara’s intake of breath, the tiny gasp of hope she swallowed at the last second lest Lena change her mind.

Lena’s fingers drew away reluctantly, trailing across the cool metal. She took a shaky breath, and slowly turned to face Kara, who stared at her with watery eyes.

“Turn your phone off.”

“W-what?”

“Turn off your phone,” Lena repeated, her voice rough. “Because if we do this, and you walk out that door citing an emergency article for Snapper Carr, Kara, I swear to God--”

Lena’s voice cracked, remembering all the times she had rearranged her schedule, all the times she’d devoted her entire focus to Kara, only to be left waiting, or have a date cut short with some half-mumbled apology about some emergency at CatCo.

_God, how blind had she been?_

“It’s already off,” Kara promised. “I told everyone I was off limits for the weekend, before I came to see you last night. I’m not going anywhere.”

For several long moments, the only sound was the rasp of their breathing, until Lena let her purse slide down her arm, catching it briefly in the crook of her elbow before setting it aside. With more confidence than she felt, Lena held Kara’s gaze. Blue eyes glinted at her in the morning light, shining with a hope Lena envied.

She pried open her jaw, disguising the effort it took to do so with a nod that felt stiff and forced. Still, Kara’s eyes lit up like Christmas day when Lena uttered the only word she could muster.

“Okay.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who spent Thanksgiving finishing the chapter that tore my heart out? Sorry for the delay, but this chapter was a late addition and so I had to write and post entirely from scratch. Now I have to go into work, so maybe help make my day better by dropping a note to let me know how you like it?

_“Okay.”_

A word so simple, yet overburdened with meaning. It hung in the air between them, each of them staring. Kara could barely bring herself to breathe, lest Lena change her mind again and vanish. But as the silence stretched on, Kara realized that the next move was hers. If she had little idea of what to do now, Lena clearly had even less of one.

Kara swallowed, willing the tension from her shoulders. ”I’ll make us some breakfast,” she said finally. She managed not to stutter, but her voice turned up at the end, turning her statement of intent into a question.

Green eyes flashed with irritation. “Seriously?”

“I’m starving,” Kara confessed, “and you’re probably dehydrated. When was the last time you had a full meal?” Lena’s arms folded across her chest, but she didn’t answer.

With a nod, Kara headed for the kitchen. She held her breath as she started pulling out a mixing bowl, waiting to see what Lena would do. To her relief, Lena didn’t leave this time either, but it was long moments before she budged from her spot by the door. As she drifted towards the breakfast bar, Kara continued pulling the ingredients for her favorite pancake recipe.

She only paused when a moment later Lena’s throat clicked convulsively.

Looking over her shoulder, Kara saw that fresh tears had sprung to Lena’s eyes. “Lena?”

“Not pancakes,” came the strangled reply, muffled by the hand that came up to scrub her face. “Please.”

Kara didn’t hesitate. “Sure. Eggs okay?” A shoulder lifted half-heartedly, but it was enough. “Eggs it is.”

Kara cleared the mugs from the previous night, and poured Lena a glass of apple juice. By habit, she cut it with a little bit of water-- Lena’s sweet tooth usually didn’t kick in until noon. She slid it towards Lena’s spot at the breakfast bar. Lena settled onto the stool in front of it, wrapping her hands around the glass as her shoulders hunched with an awkward discomfort.

The eggs cooked quickly. With dull eyes, Lena watched Kara add plenty of cheese to the scrambled eggs. There were no smart comments about healthy options, no gentle teasing about the tower of toast Kara prepared. Kara struggled to put the sound of Lena’s haggard, tearful breaths out of her mind and focus on the task at hand.

When the eggs were done, she spooned generous portions onto two plates, and stacked the toasted and buttered bread on a third. On a whim, Kara grabbed the small jar of strawberry jam she kept in the fridge. She doubted Lena would have any, but if nothing else it would lend their meal a dash of much needed color in a silent room.

When she turned around with her arms laden with food, Kara eyed Lena’s glum features and stiff seat on the bar stool. In an instant, she opted for a comfier option. “Let’s eat on the couch,” she suggested.

Kara led the way without waiting for a response. She doubted Lena would offer any, and she was right. She focused on situating the plates on the coffee table while silence persisted behind her, taking her time arranging things just so and even appropriating an abandoned coaster from their last pizza night to sit under the sticky base of the jam jar. When she turned back around, Lena still hadn’t joined her.

“Lena?”

No answer came. Kara glanced over her shoulder, and found Lena had yet to budge. She sat staring into her untouched apple juice, eyes unfocused and hands braced tightly around her glass.

“Lena!” Kara lifted her voice, gently. This time, Lena heard. Her head lifted sharply, eyes flashing to where Kara had been standing at the stove. Finding the kitchen vacant, Lena looked over her shoulder. Their eyes met, and Kara’s stomach clenched painfully at the sight of unshed tears before Lena hid her face by facing front again.

In an heartbeat, Kara forgot the eggs and toast and returned to the breakfast bar. She took up the stool next to Lena, resting her forearms against the table. Her hands itched to reach out and offer comfort, but the tension that stiffened Lena’s spine when Kara sat locked them in place in front of her. She could only wait, until Lena was ready to speak.

“I was so happy,” Lena said, scrubbing her cheeks with the heel of one hand. “You were there, you _saw_ \-- so why? Why bring me back here when all along you knew you were lying to me?”

Kara swallowed painfully. “Because it wasn’t real.”

“You keep saying that like it means something,” Lena muttered. She sniffed, scrubbing one hand over her eyes. “They were real to me. They still are. I can feel them… I hear them, smell them when I wake up in the morning. They’re all I can think about.” Green eyes met Kara’s and when she blinked, fresh tears poured down her cheeks. “How can they not be real when I miss them this much?”

For a long moment, Kara didn’t respond. She inhaled deeply, fighting the sudden tightness in her chest. When she couldn’t take in any more air, she slowly released it. Then she breathed in again, until she could speak with a voice that didn’t shake.

“The way they describe the Black Mercy is wrong,” she said finally. Lena’s gaze had already returned to the undrunk apple juice between her palms. Now, her shoulders tightened. “They say that it shows you the perfect fantasy, and that’s not true. It cheats-- it zeroes in on your single biggest regret at the moment it takes you, and reverses it. It doesn’t show you the happiness you could find, or the successes still in store. For me, it was Krypton. I had my parents and my cousin, but not Alex. Not James, or Winn. It showed you a family with the man you loved, whose death you may feel responsible for.”

Lena’s breath hiccuped in her chest, and the huff she gave was not quite as derisive as she likely meant it to be. In the cracked sound, Kara heard Lena’s heartache, the pain of losing a family, a pain only compounded when the family Lena had in Kara was wiped away by the revelation of learning her Supergirl secret.  

“You’ve been alone for a long time, Lena. I know what that feels like, and I know what it’s like to suddenly not be alone anymore, however it comes to be. Your instinct is to cling to it, pull it closer, no matter how toxic it is. But however real it felt, it _wasn’t_. And it would have killed you. I couldn’t stand by and watch it happen. Not when I knew you would find happiness a hundred times more true, more real, in the future.”

Lena scoffed, and this time it held all the dark bitterness the last one had lacked. “Now who’s being delusional?”

Kara grimaced. “Lena…”

“No, Kara! You think you know what it’s like? What my life has been? The only person who went out of their way to make me feel loved and wanted became a mass murderer! When I was thirteen years old I watched him pull further and further away from me until everything I loved in him was destroyed by his crusade against _your_ cousin!”

Lena shoved away from the table, snatching her glass of apple juice on her way to the sink. Kara watched her go, watched her dump the juice down the sink, and saw the way Lena’s fingers tightened around the glass. When it was rinsed, Lena smacked it down on the counter. As Kara stared at the water that pooled around its base, she knew that had they had this discussion at Lena’s apartment, the glass would have been flung into the sink, shattered to pieces.

“I have been answering for Lex’s crimes for over a decade,” Lena snarled. She tugged her hair away from her face with fingers that had curled into claws. “And all I have to show for it is an apartment I avoid every night because every time I unlock the door it is dark, and empty, and cold. It’s a reminder that after ten years of fighting for everything good in my life, I have nothing.”

“Lena…” Kara tried again, but Lena plowed ahead.

“And don’t start with that Pollyanna ‘one day’ bullshit,” Lena snarled. “I have been waiting for _one day_ for thirteen years, and every time I think I’ve found it, it gets pulled out from under me. It is _never_ going to happen. Not for me. I am done hoping otherwise. I’m just… done.”

Lena’s voice cracked. Kara blinked as her friend sagged against the counter, her ire giving way to a weariness borne of lonely years and profound loss. Tears pricked Kara’s eyes when she swallowed against the sudden and painful lump in her throat, issuing a silent prayer prayer of thanks to Rao for guiding her to L-Corp the night before. She knew that look.

Back in Midvale, when she’d followed Superman’s trials against Lex Luthor, Kara had seen Lena, a young girl standing with her parents. She’d never stopped to wonder how that girl’s life had changed, never realized that Kal’s victories pushed Lena into a Phantom Zone of her own. While Kara had found a new, loving family, and grown accustomed to her life on Earth, the world had pulled away from Lena.

She saw it now-- a chill ran down her spine when she realized Jess’ concerns last night had been well-founded. Kara suddenly didn’t want to know what would have happened if she’d waited even one more day.

“You don’t believe that,” she said quietly. Lena’s eyes snapped to her, outrage bubbling to the surface. Before it could boil over, Kara continued. “If you did, why are you here?”

Lena blinked, and Kara held her gaze. If Lena had run out of faith, she would have walked out Kara’s front door and never looked back. But she hadn’t. She was still here. Some small part of her still clung to the hope she claimed to have lost.

“The true curse of the Black Mercy is surviving it,” Kara said. “The fantasy it creates isn’t real, but the loss, and the grief of losing it is. But it’s not the end. It may seem out of reach now, but you will find that happiness again, Lena. _True_ happiness… the kind that gives you life and love, instead of poisoning you.”

Lena looked away, lips quivering before pressing into a thin line. She leaned against the far side of the breakfast bar, resting her weight against her forearms as she stared at her hands. Her fingers worried each other, her pale skin blanching under the pressure.

“You still have me,” Kara promised.

“It doesn’t feel that way,” Lena whispered, eye glittering with tears. Kara’s stomach churned with guilt-- she’d asked for honesty, when Lena had been ready to leave, but nothing could prepare her for the soft confession that spilled from Lena. She reached for Lena’s hand, but Lena pulled back with a shake of her head, pulling away from the table. “You spent a year hiding this from me, Kara. I thought I knew you.”

“You do, Lena.”

“No, I don’t. I know nothing about the last daughter of Krypton. You saw to that, on both fronts.”

Kara opened her mouth to protest, but snapped her jaw shut a moment later. She pulled her hands into her lap, anxiously digging at her cuticles with a fingernail.

“You’re right.” She nodded, lifting her gaze to Lena’s once more. “Withholding that knowledge meant you didn’t get to know all of me, but even though I kept that secret, I wasn’t hiding from you. I feel most myself when I’m with you. That’s the truth.”

For all that she’d kept a massive secret from Lena, Kara hadn’t ever felt that their friendship had lacked for it. She’d never felt the urge to spill her secrets. It rarely even crossed her mind when she was with Lena. Not when they laughed so much and eagerly shared stories of their days over lunch and dinner. Gossiping about boy bands and griping about Snapper’s disapproval and listening to Lena talk about her trials with her board of investors came easily, more so than the tragic story of Krypton and its hubris. With Lena, Kara simply was.

Lena didn’t respond for a long moment. Kara gave her friend time to let her words, her truth, sink in. Whether they did or not, whether Lena accepted them at face value or simply didn’t care enough to decide either way, Kara didn’t know. When Lena’s shoulders finally relaxed a long moment later, Kara tried to convince herself it wasn’t a sign of defeat.

“Who else knows?” Lena asked, folding her arms over her chest. “Alex and Winn do, obviously. Who else?”

Kara bit her lip. “James.”

Lena rolled her eyes at the mention of Superman’s best friend. “Shocker.”

“Some people at the DEO. Cat Grant suspects, but she hasn’t exactly managed to confirm it, as far as I know.”

“If Cat suspects, she knows. That woman never lets anything go.” Lena looked at her expectantly. “Anyone else?”

“Maggie.”

Dark eyebrows lifted. “Maggie. As in, Maggie Sawyer, my arresting officer?”

Kara nodded nervously. “She and Alex are dating…”

“So your sister’s brand new girlfriend gets to be in the loop, but your best friend doesn’t. This just keeps getting better and better.” She combed her her hair off her face yet, only for the strands to fall limp around her face almost immediately. “Is that it?”

Kara froze, realization flashing bright and hot against her skull. Almost as soon as she thought it she wanted to bury it, to hide the truth until Lena was less angry, less vulnerable, but it was too late. Lena saw the dawn of comprehension and rocked back on her heels, settling in to wait. 

“Your mother.”

Lena froze, her gaze hardening into rage. “Excuse me?”

“Lillian confirmed it the night we beamed up to Rhea’s ship.” Kara swallowed thickly. “She knows.”

Eyebrows lifting towards her hairline, Lena gave a mirthless smile. “Well, that is just… that’s just perfect.” She shoved away from the table and began to pace. “And you still would have left me in the dark. Fucking _perfect_.”

“I didn’t _share_ it with her, Lena! She figured it out herself!” Kara spread her hands, taking a deep breath in an attempt to keep her voice calm and level. “Please understand, it’s dangerous to know my secret. James has already been targeted. So has Alex.”

Lena shook her head. “That is such _bullshit!_  How is me knowing your secret more dangerous than my mother holding it over my head?” She rolled her eyes. “Actually, no, you know what? Don’t answer that. I really don’t want to know.”

As much as Kara hated to admit it, Lena was right. The moment Lillian confirmed she knew, Kara should have gone straight to Lena. Even if it meant losing Lena completely, she deserved to hear it from Kara’s lips, and not from Lillian, who would use it to hurt them.

“It was the wrong choice,” Kara confessed, ducking her chin. Lena huffed wordlessly, turning to resume her pacing, this time striding towards the living room, almost reaching the couch before pivoting back. “I’m sorry--”

“God! Stop saying that!” Lena snapped. “Stop saying you’re sorry. You’re not sorry you lied to me, you’re sorry I found out, and I’m sick of hearing it. So just… just _stop._ ”

Her voice cracked, and tears sprang back to her eyes. Kara broke eye contact, unable to stomach the hurt twisting Lena’s features. After a while, Lena sank onto the sofa with a shuddering sigh, burying her face in her hands.

_“Fuck.”_ The word was barely audible, but thunderous in Kara’s ears. A moment later, Lena picked her head up, giving it a shake as she leaned stiffly against the cushions, wiping her eyes. In the quiet that followed, Lena curled in on herself, drawing her knees to her chest and looping her arms around her folded legs. One hand buried itself in her hair, getting lost in the dark strands that spilled around her sweatered shoulders.

Kara slowly rose from her stool and came to sit beside her on the couch. Lena stiffened and turned her head away, but she remained seated. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

“I just… I don’t get it,” Lena muttered. “Was it all some kind of cover for you? Or some sort of bet with your cousin? He takes one Luthor, you get the other?”

_“Don’t.”_ For the first time since Lena closed the door and agreed to stay, anger flared in Kara’s chest, sharp and sudden. “Don’t cheapen what we shared, Lena. You know that’s not what it was.”

Lena glared at her, but a moment later the fight seemed to bleed out of her. “Do I?”

Taking heart, Kara scooted closer on the cushion, until their shoulders brushed. Then she dared to lean even closer, until her chin just brushed Lena’s shoulder.

“You’re my best friend, Lena. Whether I’m Supergirl, or just Kara Danvers, you are the best friend I’ve ever had.” Kara watched Lena. Green eyes looked anywhere but at her, but her lips trembled, betraying her hurt. “I wish I could say that if I’d been given more than a few days to think about it, I would have come to you myself.”

“You said--”

“I know what I said. And maybe that would have changed after the city started to rebuild. We’ll never really know for sure now, but… however late it is in coming, I’m glad you know. And I’m so grateful you’re here.”

Silence draped between them, still stiff but not quite as tense. A small improvement, but it made all the difference.

“I cherish our friendship, Lena,” Kara continued, reaching out to place her hand on Lena’s arm. “It’s precious to me.”

The fabric of Lena’s sweatshirt was soft and well-worn under Kara’s hand, evidence that it was Lena’s favorite. Kara couldn’t count the number of movies they’d watched sitting right where they were, with Lena wearing that same outfit. The first time she’d worn it, Kara had stared to the point that Lena had started to blush. Kara had quickly assured her it was fine, she enjoyed leggings too. She hadn’t been able to communicate the sense of trust that had hit her like a tidal wave-- the trust that Lena had unknowingly bestowed by letting Kara see her at her softest.

She didn’t feel that trust right now. She didn’t know if she would ever earn it back. But Lena didn’t pull away from the hand on her arm. The look she gave Kara felt deep and heavy, and in Lena’s eyes she saw the loneliness lurking in her heart. Hope wasn’t lost-- it had merely taken a temporary leave of absence. It was still there, lurking beneath the layers of betrayal and hurt and doubt that had enshrouded Lena for over a month. Somehow, Lena still had the hope she’d claimed to have abandoned.

Wordlessly, Kara edged a little closer, until their sides were flush and she could rest her head on Lena’s shoulder. She could feel Lena’s heartbeat, and let it wash over her senses. It was the only thing that felt steady and sure between them. Lena didn’t say anything, and as the minutes passed, the silence between them turned tender. With a silent sigh that seemed to fill and vacate Lena’s entire body, Lena released the last of her tension. Her head tilted, and her cheek rested heavily against the top of Kara’s head. Lena’s next breath trembled, betraying her deep exhaustion.

“I haven’t forgiven you,” Lena murmured. It lacked ire, carrying only a weary truth.

Kara nodded. “I know,” she returned softly. She didn’t need forgiveness. Not today, not tomorrow. All she needed right now was Lena, and the unspoken promise that they had the time together to get back to where they’d been before.

“I don’t if I can,” Lena confessed, her voice now whisper. She swallowed, her jaw clenching against the top of Kara’s head. “I don’t know where to go from here.”

“I don’t either.” Kara turned her head, pressing her cheek closer against Lena’s shoulder. Her lips brushed the burgundy sweater enveloping Lena’s arm, grounding her to the woman sitting next to her. “But we can figure it out. Together.”

Neither of them moved for a long time. Slowly, Lena grew more tense under Kara’s cheek, and then she felt the damp heat of tears trailing through her hair. Lena’s breaths drew closer together, rasping in her chest until they released in a sharp, unexpected sob.

_“I miss them so much.”_

Tears sprang to Kara’s eyes as she felt Lena’s body contract, her body curling into herself the tears kept coming. Lena buried her face in her arms, hunching against her knees while sobs tore from her chest. Kara pressed even closer, wrapping her arm around Lena’s shoulders. When Lena’s head lifted, Kara completed the hug by looping her arm across the front of Lena’s shoulders, loving and hating the way Lena gripped her arm like it was a lifeline.

She searched for the right words to say, the magic words that would take the pain away. But she knew from experience that there were none. Nothing would ease the hurt of losing people-- and to Lena, they were well and truly lost, without any tangible reminders they had lived at all. So Kara simply held her, and let Lena’s tears dampen the shoulder of her shirt.

Kara’s mind flashed to that foggy scene she’d glimpsed in Lena’s fantasy. The kitchen itself had long since lost its definition in her memory, but she remembered the people who had occupied it. The soft Lena who was so sure of herself, and the kids who had gravitated to her like she was the center of their universe. She remembered the way one of the boys had smiled, when Lena had affirmed something about his circuitry project.

_You’re going to be an amazing mom_ , she wanted to say. And she _would_ be a mom again, Kara was certain of it. People like Lena, with so much love to give… they deserved all the family in the world, and it wasn’t too late for her to find one. She wouldn’t have Jack, not at her side, but-- she would carry him with her. Just as Kara carried her family, and the people of Krypton. Just as she carried her Aunt Astra.

Kara longed to ask about them. She wanted to pepper Lena with questions about the children she’d dreamt of. She didn’t have to carry the weight of that family alone. But as Lena continued to sob against her softly, Kara didn’t say a word. She would let them stay Lena’s, for a little while longer. Instead she simply pulled Lena tighter against her, as tears dampened the sleeve of her shirt, and let Lena cry, and grieve, and mourn the family she lost. The rest would come later.

They had plenty of time.


End file.
